


The Other Half of the World

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Casablanca (1942)
Genre: 1940s, Angst, Central Park, F/M, Golden Age Hollywood, Lisbon - Freeform, Married Couple, New York City, Post-Canon, Unresolved Emotional Tension, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-09-26 04:33:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9862763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: Perhaps obviously, I can't stop wondering -- or writing -- about Victor and Ilsa's post-Casablanca relationship. This work follows them from Casablanca to Lisbon to New York, in chapters with alternating POV.Note for Nero Wolfe aficionados: Rex Stout's characters are borrowed in Chapter 5, where they appear in auxiliary but vital roles. Lily Rowan also appears in Chapter 6.





	1. Casablanca - Lisbon

**Author's Note:**

> During WWII, Lisbon's airport was at Sintra, rather than where it is now. I've been less successful than I had hoped in finding good contemporary road maps, so I've taken Victor and Ilsa by a somewhat circuitous route along the coast. Attentive readers may note that I've put a pharmacist's where there should be a jeweler's, and that my Portuguese is rudimentary (apologies.) It is assumed that Victor and Ilsa, as a Czechoslovakian and a Norwegian who met in Paris, normally speak French to each other.

Ilsa stares out the window of the plane. She sits upright, chilled, trying to find some spark of anger, or some warmth of gratitude, that would dispel the sense of loss that surrounds her like darkness, like fog. Once she had sent Rick away, and now he is sending her. He had done what she asked; he had found certainty when she could not. But he also claimed for her a future she finds impossible to envision. Ilsa swallows, and tips back her head to stop her tears. She tries to tell herself that it will be all right, that they’ll learn how to speak to each other again.

“Victor—” begins Ilsa; when she looks over at her husband, he has collapsed forward in his seat, sunk into himself like an abandoned marionette. Her first instinct is to look for blood, for some wound inflicted and ignored. But she finds that his breathing comes evenly. 

“Shh,” says Ilsa when he stirs under her touch. She gazes into the dark, listens to the thrumming of the engine, the hard, irregular patter of rain against the windows. She too dozes, but fitfully, waking always to the same question: what is to become of us? 

She contemplates the man next to her — so gentle, and so resilient; so distant, in some ways, and yet so unremittingly tender. _Are you ready, Ilsa?_ The uncertainty haunting his voice had made the question absolutely genuine. She shivers. She is haunted, too, by her own impulsive movement to his side, in a moment when he was threatened, and she could have stepped away from him to safety. She hadn’t. Had that been only duty? What would the exhausted freedom fighter next to her do, she wonders, if she were bold enough to demand that he be only a man to her? 

She is awake when the plane drops suddenly into its descent. Victor knocks his head against the seat, sits up with his eyes still dazed with sleep.

“Lisbon,” says Ilsa quietly.

He nods, answers almost under his breath: “We had best talk here, while we can; we won’t be heard over the engine. Our safe-conduct is precisely that; it holds no guarantees once we are in Lisbon. I’m sorry, Ilsa.” She shakes her head, dismissing this. “Before we know all of what happened in Casablanca — and what the newspapers publish — I think we had better not risk a hotel.” The wind around the wing flaps sounds like a siren’s wail. “I do have an address, from one of our friends. It should be comfortable.”

She knows that _comfortable_ means _safe._ “Fine.” Her voice sounds strained in her own ears. “I’m sure it will be fine.” A smile tugs momentarily at the corner of his mouth; but he does not speak. The colorful palace of Sintra is a mere hulk below them in the darkness.

The taxi from the airport take them down from the forested heights of Sintra, into anonymous darkness. Ships on the Tagus appear as solidifications of night. In Belém, they get out, making purposefully for a _pension_ in view of the driver, only to wander the streets until another taxi draws up long enough to disgorge a party of revelers, and to be approached in turn by Victor. Ilsa listens to her husband speaking apologetic-sounding Portuguese, and wonders when and how he managed to pick it up. Eventually, they and their bags are loaded into the car. The driver speaks to her with a sympathizing shake of the head; she attempts to smile with appropriate gratitude.

“I have told him,” whispers Victor, when they are en route again, “that our car broke down.” She nods tightly, trying not to resent her own feeling of powerlessness. 

When they have completed their descent along the cliff road, and the houses of the city have closed around them, they pay off the second driver. It seems to Ilsa that they have only walked a few paces when Lisbon opens out suddenly around them: they are on the edge of an enormous plaza, with a view of the sea. Ilsa’s breath catches in her throat at the beauty of it, but Victor takes hold of her arm when she starts across it.

“Safer this way,” he murmurs, and they turn into an arcade.

“Someday,” says Ilsa, too angry to stop herself, “it would be nice to walk in the moonlight, rather than the shadows.”

“Yes,” says her husband, his hand firm at her elbow.

They turn into a grand avenue, walking beneath furled shop awnings. The city is quiet, with only a few distant footsteps echoing with their own. The glow of a cigarette reveals a lounger in a doorway; a stifled sigh reveals a pair of lovers. They reach another square: here there is the rustling of trees, the soft plashing of a fountain. There are voices, too, rising from benches and open windows. Somewhere, a woman laughs.

“Here,” says Victor. On the corner of the street from which they’ve just emerged stands an apothecary’s, its green glass front resplendent with the tracery of their grandparents’ generation. The bell Victor presses is, however, quite modern; they can hear its faint electric buzz inside the shop. Victor waits several moments before pressing the bell again. In the ensuing silence, Ilsa can hear her heart beating. Finally, a light appears behind the glass, and then a shadow against the light. The door is opened a hand’s breadth, and a seamed, swarthy face peers out from behind a chain.

“Desculpe,” begins Victor. There is no flicker of response on the man’s face. Ilsa watches Victor swallow before continuing; she doesn’t think she is imagining that he sways a little on his feet. He recommences by speaking more deliberately, then with increasing urgency. The other man’s responses—or inquiries—are laconic. At last, however, he clears his throat and, with a few repeated syllables, shuts the door.

“It’s all right,” murmurs Victor, and the chain is heard sliding off.

The unlikely pharmacist is making gentle herding motions with his vast hands. “A senhora fala francês? Bem!” He smiles at Ilsa, showing uneven teeth, and says in sibilant and courtly French: “Please to come in, madame! Now we can talk all together, but perhaps not here. It is good if you have some small emergency that necessitates you to seek me out…”

“An accident,” supplies Victor. “A dropped wine glass… I was unlucky.”

“Good, good,” says the pharmacist. He collects from behind his counter a bottle, tape, bandages. “Please, pass this way, pass this way.” They follow him, still with their suitcases, into a surprisingly spacious tiled kitchen. Ilsa sits at the large wooden table while their host puts the kettle on. 

“Water to wash and water for tea,” he says cheerfully, while Victor is busied getting his jacket off. “Now, let’s not stand on ceremony — I don’t like knowing people’s last names — so you may call me Master Jaume, and I may call you…?”

“Victor.”

“Charmed. Good name, Victor: could be Spanish, could be French, could be anything… and madame?”

“Ilsa.”

“Could be anything north of the Rhine, at least!” The pharmacist brings his heels together and makes her a half-bow. The kettle begins its hollow whistle, and Master Jaume takes it off the hob. As the fragrance begins to rise from the teapot, the rest of the water is poured over the cloth in the pharmacist’s bowl. By the time Jaume has prepared his materials, the tea is steeped. He pours it into glass cups with pewter holders, handing one to Ilsa. He places another cup by Victor’s elbow, then takes a bottle from a shelf.

“Medicinal,” says the pharmacist, with a broad grin, as he uncorks it and splashes it into Victor’s cup. “My own recipe, too.”

His attention pulled back to his task, Master Jaume sucks his teeth disapprovingly. “So that’s supposed to have been inflicted by a wine glass. Unclench your fist.” Obediently, Victor lays his right palm flat on the table. “Fine,” grumbles Master Jaume, “a wine glass, and not something much more wicked at least a day ago, and not looked after properly since…”

“Well,” says Victor, his voice strained, “I could have been knocked down by a drunkard with a piece of broken glass, if that would be more plausible.”

The pharmacist grunts. “Better. Drink up.” Ilsa tries not to stare at the exposed wound, the spreading iodine stain.

“I ought,” mutters Jaume, “to put stitches in it, but I don’t suppose you’ll be in Lisbon long enough to have me take them out…?” Victor shakes his head; the pharmacist glares at him. “It’ll leave an ugly scar, then.”

“It will match the others.” Ilsa is surprised to hear that the laughter in her husband’s voice is genuine. The noise Jaume makes in his throat is one of exasperation, but his large hands are gentle with the bandages.

“Voilà!” he says at last. “That will suffice for the present. I’ll show you where you can sleep.” Ilsa murmurs her thanks in rising, and the next instant finds herself grasping at her husband’s arm, as he half-stumbles in getting to his feet. “Hoppla!” says the pharmacist mildly. “Don’t worry, it’s just upstairs.”

They follow him up the tiled staircase; Ilsa wonders briefly how rapidly they could get down it and to safety if, after all, they had to. That Victor — consciously or unconsciously — allows her to take some of his weight is worrisome. But the room they are shown is innocent, empty of all save the expected furniture: a bed, a dresser, a washstand, all dusty but well-kept. They make their thanks and good nights in a murmured chorus.

“It’s all right,” says Victor when they are alone, forestalling her speech. “I’m just… tired. And probably half-drunk on whatever he put in that tea. Do you want to wash up first? I’ll make a slow job of it.”

“Victor,” begins Ilsa, but remonstrances and reassurances die on her lips. “Undress while I wash, then.” Without looking at him she finishes washing, changes into her nightdress, pours clean water into the bowl. Brushing her hair, she finds herself furtively glancing at him.

“Victor, how did you get the bruises on your ribs?”

“Oh.” He seems to struggle a moment for speech. “Prison. A gesture. It could have been worse.”

“You don’t need to tell me that.” Her reply is sharper than she means it to be. She tries not to wonder if he will always, now, be too thin for his frame.

The bed, she thinks, is too small for them. She climbs under the covers, worn thin with use. She is exhausted to the point of tears, and is asleep within minutes. 

She wakes to find the house still quiet, the light already as golden as she has ever seen it in winter. Uncharacteristically, Victor is still asleep; Ilsa slips from the bed and goes to the window, moving around the perimeter of the room. Looking into the square, she finds no one coincidentally fixing a bicycle tire, or lingering too long at a kiosk. She waits a few moments and then opens the window. She leans out and inhales — not the smell of flowers, but the sweet, clean scent of trees.


	2. The Lisbon Arrangements

He sees her silhouetted against the light, and knows this is wrong before he is fully awake. He hears his own voice, hoarse, imploring; his tongue and limbs feel heavy. Not soon enough, he is on his feet, pulling her out of the view of snipers, out of the sight of spies.

“Ilsa—” She puts a hand over his mouth; it is the shock, as much as the gesture, that silences him.

“Shh.” They are absurdly tangled in the lace curtains. “I checked. It’s all right. Look. Look — old women on benches, young women with children, old men gossiping over their newspapers and their coffee.” She drops her hand to his arm. “We could join them.”

He looks over her shoulder, envisioning a gun at one of the many windows, blood on the pavement alongside rolled tables, shattered cups. But no; not in this square with its genteel café, its small shops, its curtained apartments. No assassin could hope to escape unseen among so many people unused to ignoring violence. He takes a deep breath and brings his eyes back to his wife’s face.

“Yes,” says Victor, “we could.” He places his hand briefly over hers before turning to dress.

Emerging into the sunlight, he feels hollow with weariness, less substantial than the wrought-iron chairs, the tables, the cobbles polished by wear and the damp airs from the sea. He hands Ilsa around the table, almost insistently — too insistently; her eyes meet his with a look half-question, half-reproach. He gives her a smile as he adjusts the angle of his own chair, placing himself so as to see the main approaches to the square.

“Dois cafés,” says Victor to the waiter. He is uneasily conscious of the aches of minor injuries, the tension of vigilance spun to breaking point.

On the other side of the table, Ilsa looks across the square, her gaze opaque and melancholy. The shadows under her eyes are the faint, veined purple of a mollusk shell.

“Victor,” says she without looking at him, “you’re absolutely white.”

“…My age catching up with me.”

“Victor.” Her tone is a demand to be taken into his confidence. “Casablanca was difficult, yes — but you’ve been through such situations before.”

He does not say: _None that difficult since Prague, and there I didn’t get out._ He does not say: _Not with my back to half a dozen uniformed Nazis, each with liquor in his belly and a Luger at his belt._ He does not say: _Not when I was afraid of losing you._

“Yes,” he says, “we have.” The waiter sets down their coffees.

Ilsa sips at hers. “Tell me how you learned Portuguese.”

“Corina, the singer at — at the café. You remember her? Carl introduced us; she was kind enough to teach me how to pass for a tourist.”

Ilsa shakes her head at him, smiling a little. “The things you do…”

He salutes her with his coffee cup. The silence they lapse into could almost be called companionable.

“What will happen to him?” asks Ilsa suddenly.

Even to himself, he cannot pretend ignorance of whom she means. “I don’t know, Ilsa. Renault is corruptible, at least, and they have, I think, been friends after a fashion, but… I don’t know. I’m sorry. Much depends on what happened after we boarded the plane.”

She is silent for a moment. Her hand, he notices, trembles only slightly as she lifts her coffee cup to her lips. “So they were gunshots?” Her voice is barely audible.

“I’m afraid so.”

She nods tightly, her mouth pressed shut.

 _Don’t make me responsible for his life, Ilsa. Don’t make me responsible for his death._ “I’m sorry,” he says again.

“Don’t say that. I shouldn’t have asked. I haven’t the right.”

“Ilsa.” He waits for her to meet his eyes. “You have every right over me that one human being can have over another.”

To his surprise, she reaches across the table. Her hand is cold in his. But she lets it rest there.

***

When they have breakfasted, he leaves her. Alone, he can pull his hat low, can slouch like an idler, stride like a harried businessman, imitate the weary steps and keen glances of the commercial traveler. As half of a couple, he is less likely to be classed as a potential danger, or a potential target. But Ilsa is everywhere memorable, her beauty startling as a portent. So Victor Laszlo walks alone.

In the lee of an equestrian statue, he pauses to light a cigarette. “By the grace of God and our own firmness,” says the inscription above his head. The seventeenth-century king, clad in his heroic armor, looks straight ahead, his gaze inscrutable. Victor Laszlo flicks away his match.

He turns down the Rua da Prata, walking again towards the sea. So far, he is not being followed. A tram trundles past him up the hill. The city’s hills and cobblestones, he observes, are unfriendly to bicycles; and its streets were laid out in an age when the automobile was unknown. In some ways, this simplifies matters: if he is to be pursued, it will be on foot. Experimentally, he turns into a succession of small side streets, letting them take him from avenue to avenue, until he exits the modern grid, finds himself in streets named after saints and martyrs.

His destination is a bench facing the cathedral’s west front. The medieval facade, fortress-like, has obviously been recently refinished, a monument to Portugal’s glorious history. He pulls his coat more closely around him. He marks the time by the cathedral’s bells; less than half an hour has elapsed when a middle-aged man with a French-language newspaper under his arm sits down on the other end of the bench.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” says the man in French, after a few moments.

“Very,” agrees Laszlo. “It puts all this—” he nods towards the newspaper— “rather into perspective.”

“Mm,” says the man; he sounds as though he feels the need of clearing his throat. “Indeed,” he manages, the proper counter-sign. “I think you’ll find this interesting, though.” He hands Victor the newspaper. Meeting his eyes, Victor is surprised to find there not mere nervousness, but fear, and worse, pity.

Filing his contact’s distress as a factor for consideration, Victor opens the newspaper with a practiced hand. He is already slipping the concealed identity papers into his waistband when his own name leaps out at him from the page.

VICTOR LASZLO KILLS SS OFFICER  
CAPTAIN OF POLICE ABDUCTED, FEARED DEAD

He is relieved to note that his hands do not shake. He draws in breath, and reads the brief item under the headline. _In his desperate escape from Casablanca, Victor Laszlo has shot Major Heinrich Strasser, of the Third Reich. Captain Louis Renault of the Casablanca police, and a local businessman suspected of having sold Laszlo vital documents, have disappeared and are presumed dead. Laszlo has fled to Lisbon._

Laszlo swallows twice. There is the physical impulse, of course, to get up, to pace like an animal measuring its cage. He folds the newspaper.

“Remarkable,” he says, handing it back to the man on the other side of the bench, with a polite smile. He returns to his contemplation of the cathedral. But although their exchange is finished, the man continues to sit on the bench for longer than might be strictly necessary. He seems almost to plant his feet. Laszlo, stealing a glance at the slightly pudgy newspaper-reader, thinks that he radiates a sort of pugnacious sympathy.

“Can you do something for me?” asks Laszlo, between his teeth.

“Anything,” says the man to the financial pages of the newspaper in a passionate undertone.

Laszlo moves to light another cigarette, has some trouble with the match. “A sailor’s clothes,” he says behind his hand. “Canvas trousers, shirt with no collar…” The man grunts at his newspaper.

“Forgive me,” says Laszlo aloud, “but I am a stranger in Lisbon. Could you tell me, perhaps, where to find a pharmacist’s?”

“A pharmacist’s?” echoes the man. In his eyes shines anxiety to get the answer to this question right. At last, something like enlightenment dawns. “In the Praça Dom Pedro,” he says.

“Perfect; that’s on my way.”

“I’m sure they’re open until 5 o’clock,” says the man. “Maybe 6.”

“Thank you very much,” says Laszlo in rising, and touches the brim of his hat. He walks away slowly, his hands in his pockets, not looking back.

Victor Laszlo leaves the encounter with his pulse beating too quickly, its rhythm repeating: _What will you say to her?_

Going openly is now out of the question for him; the precious passport carried against his skin is useless. There are few things, he reflects wryly, that could have made his life — his death — more worth having to his enemies, and killing an SS major is one of them. In the officially neutral streets of Lisbon, he’s now a mark not only for the networks of agents, but for any ambitious middleman, any informant who reads a newspaper. The latter, at least, he could be fairly sure of evading. But the odds of evading them all, of simply walking past customs officials and onto a ship’s passenger list (height: 1,90 meters; distinguishing marks: vertical scar over right eyebrow) are minuscule.

So much of his career — if career it can be called — has depended on considering his own death only as a contingency to be carefully, dispassionately planned for. He had been looking forward, he realizes, to a different kind of life. The legend of his defiances and daring escapes notwithstanding, his real work is persuasion. Words have always been his weapons of choice, used to draw people in and to hold them there, to convince them that their work is worthwhile. With the grip of the Reich on the continent growing tighter by the month, the week, the day, it had seemed not only reasonable but expedient that he get out, to draw more people into the fight alongside the exhausted, hopeful, valiant women and men whom he loves as his comrades. And now… His shaken exhalation sounds loud in his own ears. Even if he dies somewhere in the streets of Lisbon, or — he forces himself to confront this possibility — in Nazi imprisonment, might the other side of the world still be called into their war?

***

She is sitting on a bench by the fountain, her hands folded, her face upturned to the sun. She looks perfectly at home in her own beauty and the day’s. He finds himself holding his breath, trying to prolong the moments before he must spoil her contentment. But when she opens her eyes to see him standing over her, her face does not cloud.

“Hello.”

“Hello.” He bends to kiss her formally on the cheek.

“Have a seat.” She moves a bandbox from the bench to the cobbles at her feet. “I’ve bought a hat.” She smiles at him, a slightly off-center, conspiratorial smirk. “It hides my face _beautifully_.”

“Wonderful.” He takes a deep breath. “I’ve good news, too, Ilsa: he’s safe.”

She lets her breath out as though she’s been winded, as though she’s forgotten to breathe, and then she is laughing and gasping with laughter, fingers clutching the fabric of his sleeves. Just as he is thinking that perhaps he ought to speak to her, to shelter her in his arms, she gives herself a little shake, grips him a little tighter, reassuring them both: she has herself in hand. It is with a vertiginous mixture of relief and compunction that he is visited by a revelation. She has been waiting for this news, he thinks, since June 1940. For a year and a half she has been waiting to hear that Rick Blaine is safe.

“Victor,” says Ilsa, “let’s have lunch somewhere and—and drink too much wine.”

He makes his calculus quickly: the Portuguese papers will not have the news of Strasser’s death until the evening editions. “Certainly,” says Victor Laszlo, and gives her his arm.

They walk the streets in silence, and if there is tension between them, it is not unpleasant. Sometimes he thinks he is half-dozing on his feet, relying entirely on learned instinct to tell him if they are being followed, if they are in immediate danger. They wander into the Alfama, up the sensuous curve of a hill, past a line of laundry, an unexpected garden spilling through a gate, vigilant cats, street lamps in the form of wrought iron ships, a house with a broken window and lace curtains. By mutual, unspoken consent they stop outside a café with yellow stucco and a green awning; a set of sheets hangs from the balcony on the floor above.

Inside, the pale sunlight is reflected from copper pots. The room is small enough to be scented and heated by the kitchen, for which Laszlo is disposed to be grateful. They are seated where he can keep an eye on the door without being backed into a corner. He tries to feel that this is a good omen.

“Victor,” says Ilsa, a note of mild admonition in her voice, and he snaps to attention; it is only the waiter, standing expectantly.

“You got everything you needed this morning?” asks Ilsa quietly, when the man has gone.

“Oh,” says Victor, “yes.” He is afraid that if he were to reach for her hand, he would grip it too tightly, would be unable to give any plausible excuse for doing so.

“Santé,” says Victor, as Ilsa raises her glass to him; he is afraid to tempt fate with a more elaborate toast. He can’t help the feeling that this is something like an elaborate simulacrum of happiness: the wine that tastes of a lost summer’s fruit, the scent of saffron from the shared dish between them, the softness in the face of the woman he loves. It seems dangerously insubstantial, and still more dangerously precious.


	3. Impossible Futures

Lulled by the restaurant's warmth, Ilsa feels as though she has found something long-lost, and that, as for the woman in the parable, the finding is cause for infinite rejoicing. Somehow, despite the risks he took for them, Rick has found his way to a place of safety. How he managed it she has no idea -- to ask for details would be cruel -- but he is clever and he is bold, and he has, after all, a history of underground work longer than Victor’s. The man she loves is safe. More remarkably still, she and Victor seem to be poised on the brink of a new life. _Like swimmers into cleanness leaping._ And perhaps, sometimes, it will be enough.

Silences are no rare thing between them, in this life where speech is so often dangerous. But Ilsa begins to feel that this one has lasted too long.

“Penny for your thoughts,” says she, in English.

He gives her what she thinks of as one of his disjointed smiles: there is laughter on his lips, and something in his eyes that she can neither name nor fathom.

“I was thinking,” says Victor Laszlo gravely, “about you.”

“Oh?” She fails to keep her tone light.

“And New York.” She knows him well enough to wait for the next deliberate sentence. If he is preoccupied, at least he has lost the blanched tautness of the morning. “There will be less of the usual sort of work for you to do.”

“What, you’re afraid I’ll pine away without incendiary pamphlets to translate?”

“Hardly that. It might be a pleasing novelty, to become the woman of leisure you’ve pretended to be. Though it might scandalize the Americans.” Ilsa furrows her brow; is her husband _flirting_ with her?

“But I was wondering,” says Victor slowly, and she decides she was mistaken, “if you might be willing to undertake another kind of work.”

“I’m listening.”

“Would you… Ilsa, would you speak? About what we have been doing? About those who have been doing it with us? I — I might be dismissed as a troublemaker, but you…”

“Would speak as a troublemaker’s mistress? Surely that’s even worse!”

“If we were to confess what we are to each other — ” this thought is broken off. He raises his wine glass to his lips, not meeting her eyes. “I know it’s a great deal to ask of you, Ilsa, but you would be safe enough in New York.” There is a note of pleading in his voice. “We could, I think, make it known that we are married; that we have been allies.”

“Allies,” says Ilsa softly. This, she realizes, is true, whatever else they have been — and have not been — to each other. “If that is the best way for me to be a part of your work…”

“You have never been only that.” 

“No?”

“No.” 

Ilsa swallows. “Well,” she says, and tries to smile, “there goes my reputation as your scandalous mistress.”

He puts down his silverware, and she realizes that his hands are trembling. “You’ll do it, then?”

“Yes,” she says; it is unlike him to require a thing to be said twice, or even to be said explicitly. “Yes, I’ll do it.”

“Thank you.” The intensity of his relief shakes her.

For several minutes, they are silent. Ilsa toys with a forkful of rice, wishing she had something whole to offer this man. If she cannot give him all he deserves, at least she can give him the truth.

“We were lovers,” she says abruptly. “In Paris. For months.” Her mouth is dry; she finishes her glass of wine. “I had been told you were dead — not just by the newspapers, Victor, but by our friends — and I was utterly alone.” He is regarding her with absolute steadiness, without any attempt to forestall or to console her. 

“Rick was warm,” she says, “and charming, then. It wasn’t just that it was easy to be with him; we had something that was firm and real. We were going to leave Paris together, and then — ” _And then I abandoned him, because I could not abandon you._ “And then,” says Ilsa, “I ended it as though it had been something shabby. But it was never that.”

“No,” says Victor softly. He refills both their wine glasses.

“So.” She lifts her chin a little. “Now you know.”

“Yes.” A muscle in his cheek twitches; it is not a smile. “You are much more honest about it than your Monsieur Blaine.”

“Well! he’s a terrible liar.”

“But a good man.”

“I think so.”

***

In the street, the wind has risen, chilling the day. She moves closer to Victor for warmth, and feels him relax at her touch. An instant later, he takes her forearm in his customary grip. Hazy with food and wine, with the relief of confession, she cannot bring herself to resent it.

“What do we do now?” 

“We go back to the house,” he says; “we stay out of sight. Sleep, if we can.”

The streets of the city seem unusually still, caught in the hush of an approaching storm. Ilsa shakes her foot free of a windblown newspaper, and tells herself the only immediate threat comes from the scudding clouds.

There is something seductive about the mid-afternoon quiet, the rustling of the trees, the watery grey light that fills the room above the pharmacist’s. Ilsa divests herself of shoes and suit. It is almost the first rule of their existence: rest when you may, so that you can run when you must. She gathers a handful of the pillowcase in one fist. She notes, sleepily, that Victor moves his gun from his jacket to his side of the bed, but decides she does not need to know why.

She wakes to the sound of the door closing. Her first action is to check under her husband’s pillow; having made sure the gun is still there, she puts on a dressing gown and tells herself not to worry. The rain has begun, dimming the window.

When Victor reenters, it is with a brown paper parcel under his sound arm. Ilsa sits up, on her guard against the unexpected.

“Ah, my dear.” He sets the package on the bed and begins examining the contents: trousers that look as though they have survived natural and manmade disasters; two clean but collarless shirts, and several cheap scarves, of varying degrees and kinds of ugliness. 

“I’m afraid to ask!”

He grins. “A gift from an ally. The scarves are… an inspiration.” He sits on the opposite side of the bed, places his hand on the coverlet between them. “Ilsa, I have a confession to make.”

She sits up straight. “Tell me.” It is never a good sign when his jaw works as though he is testing to see if it is broken.

“Ilsa, for me to try to board the ship with you is as much as both our lives are worth. I — I am making alternate arrangements, but please go.”

“But we agreed! Victor!” The desolation in his eyes is no antidote to her anger at being treated as though she were a mere luxury, as though she were not fully to be trusted. “I refused in Casablanca and I refuse now — I thought you said the papers were all right!”

“They are.” He places them on the bed; she opens them. Victor and Ilsa Lund. Norwegian, a married couple.

“Half true,” she says softly.

“But now, according to the newspapers, I have killed Major Strasser, of the Third Reich. And a Prefect of Police. And your Monsieur Blaine.”

For a long moment she gazes at him, stricken. “What…”

“Blaine and Renault have vanished, it would seem. I can only imagine it was at Blaine's instigation; if even part of the truth were known, he'd be under arrest.”

“And now?” It is barely a whisper; she cannot seem to get her breath.

“You have the addresses for New York. You take the papers. And both guns. If you are asked, you know nothing of where I am. I leave here as soon as it is fully dark, in case…” He ends the phrase with an apologetic half-smile. “In case.”

“The last time we were separated…”

“I know.”

“But you want me to go.”

“I want you to be safe, Ilsa.” It is a confession, too weary to be a plea. “If you stay, they will want to talk to you, and…” He cannot finish the sentence.

Ilsa takes a deep breath. “I’ve said I would do the work, and I will.” Her throat is tight with misery.

He places one hand briefly over hers, then turns away. There is silence between them. Ilsa watches him steadily; he sits with his head bowed, his hands dangling loosely between his knees. His shoulders are sloped with weariness, but his jaw is resolute. She resists the impulse to place a hand on his shoulder. 

The rain beats on the window, and there is no shared future for them outside this room. She shivers, and draws the dressing gown more closely around her. She will at least know that she stayed as long as she could, that he did not die abandoned. And she will have her work.

“Victor,” says Ilsa distinctly, “I want you to make love to me.”

He snaps round to face her, his eyes enormous above sharpened bones. “What?”

“You heard.”

“Ilsa…” It is a shaken breath. “Ilsa, you don’t…” He clears his throat. “I’ve been a dying man too often to deserve a final charity. And I don’t want charity from you.”

“I’m not offering you charity.” She kneels on the bed. “If they kill you, Victor, I will never know where to find your body. Once you leave this room, and this bed, we may never see each other again in this world. And I — want — you — ”

This time he does not let her finish the sentence.

What surprises her is not that his mouth is hard and eager against hers, or that his callused fingers, after tracing swiftly down ridges of bone, rest delicately against the curve of one breast. What surprises her is that he — a man accustomed to holding at least three escape routes in his head — seems to have no clear plan of how to proceed. Ilsa sighs. She moves closer to her husband, tracing his familiar scars. “Victor,” says Ilsa, taking his hand in hers, “come here.”


	4. Disappearance

In sleep, she is remote from him, but her face is still untroubled. He catalogues this as a mercy. He lies wakeful, dazed with the relief of being, for once, told what to do, of letting his mind go blank, of depending on the knowledge of the body. Victor Laszlo raises himself on his good arm, leans to brush back the hair that clings to his wife’s temple. 

There are so many things he has not done with her. Never has he translated for her in a darkened opera house, his lips against her ear: _Kiss me, just kiss me, give me peace!  
Never shall I turn to the world. Kiss me if need be till I'm dead!_ He closes his eyes against the image—morbid, unworthy of them both. He has chosen this life. And however awkwardly, however hesitantly, they have chosen it together.

In rising, washing, packing, he moves as silently as he can. He prepares to disappear. He takes out the bottle of hair dye obtained from Master Jaume. (He had insisted on paying or it; not even a discrepancy in the pharmacist’s books must remain to incriminate them.) This camouflage contains its own risk, of course, but at least the telltale gray streak will be invisible in these first hours of his notoriety. 

It is as he is darkening the hair at his temples that he finds Ilsa watching him in the small mirror. He finds he does not have to force his smile. He finds that some of the tension leaves his shoulders.

“Breathing has always come easier,” he says, “with you in the room.”

“Victor, don’t.”

He shakes his head, agreeing with her. “I didn’t mean to be maudlin. Color all right in the back?”

“Mmhm.” 

He finishes dressing in silence, knots one of the hideous scarves around his neck, another around its fellows and the spare shirt.

At last he turns to her. “Ilsa, you know that—”

“Yes.” She reaches for him, and he kisses her—urgently, tenderly, solemnly. Then he departs.

He walks quickly and without apparent haste, practicing the easy swing of the arms that comes with a sailor’s gait.

He walks to a cliff overlooking the sea, to a small, whitewashed church. Its interior is dim and quiet; an order’s faded banners hang above the iron frames for votive candles. In the side chapel hangs a painting of the Virgin and Child, both implausibly rosy and well-fed, impossibly tranquil and distant. Victor rests his head against the narrow wooden back of the chair in front of him.

He breathes deeply. There is something about the silence of churches that encourages transparency. And transparency has always been his best armor. He exhales. What must he be now? A man without a country; this ache he knows. A man on the run from the law; this watchfulness, too, is familiar. The unhealed scar on his forearm means that he must be a man with trouble in his past. If he’s asked about prison, being honest risks the second question: _what for?_ That must be a guarded secret. And it is no bad thing to have one or two secrets openly kept. A little stiffly, Laszlo gets to his feet, and goes out into the world.

If asked, he will be Yevan, a Russian-French refugee, a sailor with no papers and too much past. For now, he is waiting for the next high tide. For now, he must ignore the prickling anxiety of knowing that his life could end if the wrong man walks into the wrong bar.

All the ships’ crews, he ascertains, are fully accounted for. As the clocks of the city strike one, Victor Laszlo watches the lights of the night’s last ship recede. He wanders up from the river until he finds a narrow, walled stairway that is empty even of stray dogs. Here he sleeps, waking intermittently to the sounds of automobiles, to the sounds of passing feet, tensing against the eventuality of an electric torch, of interrogation.

When dawn comes, it comes like a reprieve. The few others abroad in the still-dark streets glance at him incuriously, if at all. He navigates methodically until he finds a bathhouse. He has no wish, now, to be mistaken for a benighted drunkard. Sitting among other men rendered anonymous by nudity, he tries to conceal his scars from view, tries to conceal the fact that he is doing so. In preparing to depart, he debates leaving his spare clothes with the attendant; but no. Better to leave no evidence of his presence, of his existence.

Bathed and refreshed, he returns to the quay. It is late enough that activity is already hectic, allowing him to slip unquestioning and unquestioned into a row of men who are too few to make a reliable relay system. This earns him a midmorning coffee and a chance to become known under his new identity. Perhaps not least, it earns him two more hours of safety.

“Out of work?” inquires his neighbor sympathetically, when he has quenched his thirst sufficiently for conversation.

“Afraid so.” 

“Well, we’re not officially shorthanded, but — hey, Joãozinho!” 

The man answering to the diminutive is a grizzled giant. Taking his hand, Laszlo grins to demonstrate his appreciation of the humor.

“We could use another pair of hands today, couldn’t we?”

The older man grunts noncommittally. 

“It’s not often you get a madman volunteering his services…” continues Laszlo’s neighbor.

“I suspect he’s not volunteering.”

Laszlo shrugs self-deprecatingly. “I’m looking for what I can get. And that’s little enough, these days. I’m obliged for the coffee.”

“Alcança quem não cansa,” retorts Joãozinho. “Will you work — unofficially — for a half-day’s wages?”

“Gladly. I don’t suppose a hot meal might be included… unofficially?”

They shake hands on it, and he is introduced to his temporary colleagues; Laszlo becomes Yevan.

That evening, he buys himself a secondhand blanket, hoping he won’t have to use it. But the tide again carries full crews beyond the horizon. Disposing himself to sleep on a park bench, he finds he cannot remember the last time he spent wages with such satisfaction.

By his third night of sleeping rough, he finds himself more tempted than he should be by the risk of a boarding house. Again he spends the day at the harbor, nodding to acquaintances in passing, observing the flow of goods, of men. He allows himself to doze on his feet in the sun, establishing himself as a man whose only curse is enforced idleness. 

He waits until evening to eat. The potatoes and onions are greasy, as is the secondhand newspaper he peruses. He pays out the centavos for a second glass of wine, for the excuse to stay longer indoors. He is relieved to note that his own name has migrated to the back pages of the newspaper. As the evening progresses, an argument behind him builds into a fight. He replaces the French newspaper with a Portuguese one, and studiously ignores the commotion. Too studiously. Shouts are not enough to warn him before a swung chair catches him on the shoulder. The next instant, he has the chair’s leg in one hand and its wielder’s hair in the other. He brings the chair into contact with the belligerent’s jaw before twisting it to the floor, releasing his hold on the man. The man is broad-shouldered, with powerful hands, and he shows signs of collecting his wits. Laszlo delivers a straight right to the jaw, and kicks the man’s feet from under him.

He rolls his shoulders back and straightens to survey the scene. He does not need fluent Portuguese to tell him that the hissed whisper of the man’s companion is colorful in the extreme. The other erstwhile combatant stands motionless and slightly agape. The proprietor, assiduously cleaning his bar, mutters something proverbial about being wary of dogs who do not bark. Victor Laszlo curses himself for making himself conspicuous.

“So,” he says, in _patois_ , and his voice is steady, “are you going to take him home, or do you plan to destroy more furniture?” The tableau dissolves abruptly; people return to their drinks, their conversation slightly too loud. The drunkard is raised by his companions, who depart, not without a backward glance. Slowly, Victor Laszlo unclenches his hands.

“I’m not going to ask where you learned that,” says the owner from behind him.

“Good,” says Laszlo, and forces himself to turn his back on the room.

“Useful skill, though.”

“Very.”

“Any other useful talents?”

Laszlo takes another swallow of the rough red wine, and wonders how much to reveal.

“Digging ditches. Stoking engines. Doing a full day’s work, in heat or cold.”

A flicker of interest. “Oh, yes?”

“Yes.” Had the interest been too keen? Laszlo finishes his wine; it would, in any case, be unwise to stay here longer tonight. He picks up the chair that had been a weapon. “I’m sorry about…”

The man raises both hands. “Ending a fight you didn’t start?”

Laszlo shrugs. “Lucky he was drunk enough to have it end there.”

“He was lucky to be drunk enough for you not to finish him.”

Laszlo manages a mirthless laugh. He suspects that he should be able to summon indignation at the implication that he could kill a man. He finds he cannot feign it. 

“Well,” he says, “no harm done.” It’s a lie, of course, as well as a platitude; but he hopes it may pass muster.

“Your name?” asks the owner, as Laszlo gets up. “In case I hear of any work going?”

“Yevan.”

“You don’t have another one?”

“Not that anyone outside Russia can pronounce!” He is careful to keep tension out of his voice. “Good night!” Laszlo leaves knowing he will not return.

Walking rapidly once he has turned the corner, he leaves the neighborhood altogether, climbing into the warren of the old city.

He stops outside a bar from which proceeds music. Its staircase looks encouragingly dingy. He decides not to trust himself to the streets. Better, surely, to be somewhere with noise, with music, with the comings and goings of people absorbed in their own concerns. He descends the stairway, and enters under the cover of applause.

Cigarette smoke clouds above the heads of the audience; on the stage, emerging from its mist, is a woman in black. He thinks of Corina, in exile with her guitar, as he slips into a seat at the bar. He orders wine, and the drums begin.

The woman sings of love, and longing; he needs no language to tell him this. She raises her voice in a cry, and the hair on his arms stands up. Too tightly he grips the stem of his glass; he does not trust himself to join in the inevitable applause.

“Good, isn’t she?” 

Laszlo suppresses a start. “Very,” he agrees mildly with his neighbor. “I’m afraid, though, that I didn’t quite catch…”

“Ah!” The man asks no better, apparently, than to enlighten a stranger. “Her lover has left her. Gone away over the ocean,” he says, with slightly maudlin melancholy.

“And when she cries out, about — madness…”

“The old women are crazy, she says! Crazy to say that he won’t come back to her, the old women dressed in black, the widows on the beach.”

“But she has already become one of them.”

“The song doesn’t say.” The man frowns slightly. “Cheerful fellow, aren’t you?”

“Incurably,” says Victor Laszlo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The opera Laszlo is thinking of is the Czech masterwork _Rusalka_ , the story of a doomed love; this is the scene in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yza80BG4b_8. I assume that, as a middle-class Czechoslovakian, Laszlo would reverence Dvorak. 
> 
> Laszlo's theologically-vague sense of churches as a place of refuge is based on statistical probability; Czechoslovakia was over 70% Catholic according to 1930s census records, though this was a decreasing number, and ethnicity, nationalist sentiment, and confessional identity intersected in complex ways. 
> 
> The song heard in the bar is _Barco Negro_ , one of the great hits of Amalia Rodriguez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHFEHGAJ-hk


	5. Departures, Arrivals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ilsa navigates New York, meets her new allies, and tries to learn the shape of her new life.

Boarding the SS Excalibur, Ilsa wears the concealing hat, the carefully-brushed suit. It is part of their camouflage that she should appear immaculate, anything but a refugee. Trying not to think about what jewelry she will have to sell next, she tips the porter who handles her bags. As she performs the other duties of departure, she is visited by visions of herself. She imagines weeping helplessly on the gangplank, a desolate figure, the object of pity and ghoulish curiosity. She imagines breaking down in front of the purser. She imagines shaking, struck dumb, while interrogated on the whereabouts of her husband.

Blinking against the fog that comes in from the sea, she answers questions for the customs official’s form. She notes the tension in the shoulders of the uniformed man, the alertness of the man in plainclothes behind him. She breathes a silent prayer of thanks that she is the only one facing this scrutiny. _Lund, Ilsa. Twenty-six years and five months. Married._ She finds herself slightly surprised by her own truthfulness.

“Purpose of coming to United States?”

She is silent until the man raises his eyes to hers. “To survive,” she says, and the litany recommences. Ilsa hears her husband’s answers to the questions like echoes of her own. _Whether alien intends to return to country whence he came._ What if that country no longer exists? What would bland, well-fed men such as these make of his history? Arrest, imprisonment, condition of health… Ilsa clasps her hands more tightly together.

Later, she stands upright, white-knuckled, at the rail, and watches Lisbon recede, its noises blurring beneath the cry of gulls, the throb of the engines, and the harsh, hoarse voice of the winter sea. For a long time she watches the horizon, as the Atlantic widens between her and Europe.

***

Anticipating New York, she toys with the idea of volunteering — then pursues it, attempting to wrangle it into plausibility. But she cannot make an image of herself handing out platitudes and cups of coffee feel real. In vain she attempts to keep from speculating about the unknown. She remembers once asking Rick — spontaneously, anxiously — what American women were like. He had chuckled, deep in his chest. 

“Nothing like you, kid.” And then, his eyes darkening as he looked up at her: “There’s no one in the world like you.” More even than the pleasures of those languorous mornings, she misses his laughter and her own. Ilsa shivers. For the second time in twenty-four hours she finds herself facing a new life, and she does not know what it will mean to face it alone.

Ilsa has always been an excellent sailor, but on this voyage, she finds herself restless, ill at ease. The Excalibur is a world between worlds, its neutral flag blazoned on its side as a badge of honor, and as protective coloring. The ship is overcrowded; the passengers seem to be divided between those who came to Europe expecting relative peace, and those who are fleeing its war. All are on edge. They have come from hotels and leaky bedsits and anonymous safe houses to this place where state rooms share verandahs, where there is still a palm court above the dining room, where parquet floors shine with wax. The daily bulletins are a strange mixture of the ship’s reality and the world’s:

_Bridge will be played in the lounge at 9:00 p.m._

_Fighting between Soviet and German forces near Naro-Fominsk._

_Fighting near Tobruk, in Libya._

_Shuffleboard courts are open on the covered deck._

Ilsa spends as little time as possible in the state room she shares with strangers. She paces the covered deck, declining invitations to shuffleboard, or she wraps herself in blankets and dozes on the top deck, oddly soothed by the indifference of the winter air.

On the 8th December, the ship’s bulletin is headed with a notice in block capitals:

US DECLARES WAR ON JAPAN

Ilsa reads the notice in full, and still cannot fully comprehend what it must mean. The consequences must be incalculable; but at last, at last, they are not alone any longer, an unofficial army on a conquered continent. She wants to exult. She wants to drink champagne. She wants to tell Victor, to knot her fist in one of his ridiculous scarves and kiss him. She bathes her face in cold water and goes to dinner with her face grave.

Almost despite herself, she finds that her heart lifts at the sight of New York. Whatever happens next, she has made it this far. The endless ceremonials of the customs house completed, she ventures into its heart, the rails chanting to her that this is is Rick’s city, that he would know how to read its faces, that its smells and noises would hold, for him, familiar messages. 

In a narrow apartment building on 2nd Avenue, where she nods at secretaries on the stairs, she lies awake at night, listening to the noises of the unfamiliar city. By day, she sits in parks, and she rides in trains, letting the world slide by her. She watches the winter shadows trace over the skyscrapers, softening their sharp lines. When it is too cold to remain outdoors, she pays her fare and she rides the subway, simply for the sake of filling time. She learns the city through the changing faces on its underground platforms: businessmen and secretaries, shop girls and seamstresses, musicians and vegetable sellers, housewives and pickpockets. There are men and women who retain proudly the clothing of the countries whence they came. There are women dressed in furs in the middle of the day. There are men who seem intently bound on indecipherable occupations.

She sells the suits of Casablanca — useless in a New York winter, and undesired in any case. In the same warren of shops, she buys a dark dress with white polka dots. She cannot help feeling that she is dressed like her own mother; but it is a suitable uniform — or disguise — for the work she must take on. Wearing it, she undertakes her first errand.

Her destination, on 79th St., turns out to be larger than anticipated. Walking from Central Park, she scrutinizes brass plates until suddenly confronted by the enormous stone legend: Bohemian National Hall. She had expected something like the severe silence — or barely-restrained chaos — of an embassy. She only realizes this when her expectations are confounded: almost as soon as she forces herself under the shadow of the Renaissance facade, the building’s apparent stateliness is belied by the activity within it. A woman carrying a cake nearly knocks into her and promptly apologizes, laughing, first in Czech and then in English. A man carrying a ladder leads a procession of three others carrying greenery. Ilsa finds herself made shy by this cheerful bustle. She has to clear her throat to get the attention of a dark-haired young woman in a red dress, who is craning away from her desk to follow the progress of the ladder.

The young woman blushes, but her wide smile is unabashed. “May I help you?”

“I hope so. I — I was hoping that you might take messages, for… Czechoslovakians coming here, having arrived in New York.”

The receptionist catches her lower lip between strong, square teeth. “Like an answering service? We have a message board, but it’s been moved because of the wedding…” She waves a hand to indicate the lobby littered with fallen sprigs of greenery, the entryway with its traffic. 

“Something more private than that, if possible,” says Ilsa firmly. One voice in her head says that it is foolish to be gripped by the hand of fear, even here; another says that it is worse than foolish to commit the name of Victor Laszlo to paper, with a clue to where he is expected.

“I’ll see,” says the young woman, and practically jumps up, disappearing in search of authority. Ilsa finds herself oddly reassured by the girl’s clean-limbed spontaneity, her confidence in her own ability to help anonymous exiles who turn up at her desk. Ilsa waits. In a lull in the wedding preparations, she can hear children’s singing. It’s the kind of lilting song devised for children in all languages, but Ilsa still finds herself blinking hard, hearing thus a language which she knows only through murmured endearments or nightmare cries.

The authority appealed to is a man with a widow’s peak, kind eyes, an old-fashioned mustache, a gold tie-pin. He smiles at her. “How may I help you, Miss…?”

“Mrs.,” she says; "Mrs. Laszlo." She hopes she sounds more confident than she feels. “I was hoping I could leave my address here for my husband, in case he… when he…” She stops, thinking: _I should have rehearsed this better._ “I am awaiting my husband’s arrival from Europe,” she says; her voice sounds loud in her own ears.

The older man’s brown eyes seem to grow liquid with sympathy. “Sad times,” he says; “sad times. But of course.” He hands her, with flourish, a gold pen from his own pocket, and makes a gesture to the girl, who instantly proffers a pad of paper with both hands.

“Thank you.” She writes down her own address and nothing more.

***

Where to buy food is, for once, not an enigma to be resolved by inquiries at shuttered shops or bribes under a counter. She subsists on odd fare: hot nuts eaten out of greasy paper, watching the walkers in Central Park; oranges, consumed while waiting for the subway, their juice staining her handkerchiefs. She consumes strong coffee made by her fellow exiles, now of Chelsea and Woodbridge and Columbia Heights. She eats pastries that have kept their Central European names, and licks sugar from the corners of her new life. Fruits and vegetables are sold from carts and stalls in overwhelming profusion, an abundance that she is accustomed to encountering only in memory, as part of the world-before-the-war. The displays seem to defy sorrow. On her third morning in the city, Ilsa finds herself standing on the corner of 86th St., transfixed by the sight of a split pomegranate, lying on the sidewalk next to a costermonger’s stand. To judge by the faces of the passersby, the gleaming flesh and seeping juice remind no one else of death, of blood.

It is the pomegranate that finally decides her: no more waiting, no more careful assessments or cautious reconnoitering. She must abandon the luxury of ordering her own life. The address with which she is armed is a simple intersection: 35th and 10th. Ilsa follows this cryptic direction through bustling streets. She is waved impatiently out of the way of trucks leaving manufacturers’ headquarters: stop there, come here. She is surrounded by the din of industry, and the wet, luxurious smell of florists’ shops, stocked for Christmas. She buys a white carnation, by which she may be recognized. She passes shabby tenements and shining apartment buildings. She reaches the corner of 10th Avenue, and discovers her destination.

 _Sam’s Place._ Ilsa’s heart drops. The name is written in bright letters, scrawled in an electronic imitation of handwriting. She has a knack, she thinks bitterly, for blundering into her own past. Entering, she finds the place to be a confusing hybrid of shop and café. Tentatively, she seats herself at the counter and orders a cup of coffee. Scanning the other patrons, she is relieved to spot, three seats down from her, a titian-haired man in a brown suit, his hand wrapped around a perspiring glass.

The coffee, when it comes, is badly burnt, and she puts it down more hastily than she means to.

“What’s the matter?” asks the man. “You never seen a man drink a glass of milk before?”

“I haven’t, no.”

He shakes his head with mock gravity. “That’s a shame. It’s wholesome, and full of surprising health benefits.”

“I’m sure it is.” How easy and how terrifying, the giving of sign and counter-sign. She is suddenly and mortifyingly convinced that she is going to cry. 

“Look,” says the friendly man, wrinkling his tip-tilted nose, “what would you say to a hot lunch? I don’t like discussing work on an empty stomach.”

She just nods. 

“Right,” says her contact. He unfolds himself from the stool with surprising grace, fishing coins from his pocket. “Cancel the sandwiches, Sam!” Even as a stranger, Ilsa can tell that the owner’s growl of annoyance is a performance.

Once he has ushered her out onto the sidewalk, the young man introduces himself. “The name’s Goodwin. Archie Goodwin, and I’d invite you to call me Archie except I suspect you wouldn’t.”

She smiles. “Mr. Goodwin. Ilsa Lund.”

“Miss Lund. Since honesty is the company policy, I’ll tell you that I was expecting a man fresh from saving the world, though of course you’re a pleasant surprise.”

She finds herself touched by the warmth in his voice. How unexpected, how disarming, to receive kindness. “Mr. Laszlo is rather occupied in saving his own skin at the moment. To the best of my knowledge,” she adds.

The young man scans her face. “Uh-huh.” He absorbs the information without other comment or question, and Ilsa’s estimation of his intelligence and tact increases. “Glad to receive a partner of the firm, as it were. Since we won’t be allowed to discuss our work — well, your work — over lunch, I’ll give you the essentials now. The big idea is to get the well-heeled elite off their well-upholstered posteriors — metaphorically speaking. Maybe to get other groups talking to each other too, but it’s the elites who show up to Lily Rowan’s parties. Lily likes to pretend she’s neutral, but she was supporting the war effort before there was a war effort to support, so I tell her she’s a sham.”

“You digress, Mr. Goodwin.”

“I do, at that.” He runs a hand over his nape. “That’s about it, really, at least for what I can tell you. Lily’s got it all worked out, launching your celebrated journalist-cum-political-prisoner on New York. I suppose you stand for him?”

“Yes,” says Ilsa, as he leads the way up the steps of a brownstone; “I stand for him.”

“Now,” says Goodwin in monitory tone, as he takes off her coat to hang it on the hall stand, “Mine host — who is also mine boss — is not a contact, nor has he any wish to be. He just likes feeding people.” 

“Oh,” says Ilsa. “He sounds like a good ally.”

“He is.” 

It is the first time in over a year that she has been a guest in someone’s home, rather than a fugitive, ushered un-whispering through hallways. 

In the dining room sits a man even fatter than Signor Ferrari. “Archie,” he rumbles, “you are late for lunch.”

“And I compound my sin,” rejoins the young man cheerfully, pulling out a chair. “I bring an unexpected guest. Miss Ilsa Lund, Mr. Nero Wolfe.”

The big man inclines slightly in his chair; she takes this as permission to sit. 

“It’s kind of you to have me, Mr. Wolfe.”

He makes a noise in his throat; she expects that, to Mr. Goodwin, it does not sound neutral. “Miss Lund.” He holds one enormous hand up, flat palm towards her. It is the gesture of a saint in an ikon. Perhaps he knows this. When she drags her gaze from his hand to his face, he speaks again. “It is my absolute rule that there shall be no discussion of business at the table.”

She inclines her head in acknowledgement. “I look forward to our conversation.”

It turns out that Mr. Wolfe — whatever his occupation — is a remarkably well-educated man. Over omelettes of a quality she had thought unknown outside Paris, they discuss Molière and map-making, sea-faring and Socrates. It is as she is drinking the excellent coffee, and listening to Mr. Wolfe’s discussion of the poetry of Sigbjørn Obstfelder, that the thought rises unbidden: _I wish Victor were here._

***

Meeting Lily Rowan requires Ilsa to walk across Central Park and into another world. Crossing the park from her boarding house, she checks her handbag compulsively: keys, handkerchief, gun; keys, handkerchief, gun. After the third time, she forces herself to keep her hands still, relaxed. It will not do to develop bad habits. The doorman treats her with incurious courtesy; she congratulates herself on having worn the brown dress.

When her hostess opens the door, Ilsa feels the need to recalibrate her expectations, taking into account the fact that Lily Rowan is beautiful, and that she uses this beauty like a weapon. She murmurs her responses to Lily’s words of welcome. In another room, the buzz of conversation already rises, underscored by the clink of glasses, the occasional pop of a cork. 

“I’m terribly glad to have you here,” says Lily Rowan; if she is not sincere, she is a formidable actress. “And you mustn’t feel that you’re second-best. It’s all quite romantic, this last-minute substitution.”

“I’m sure it is.” She keeps her voice dry, almost neutral.

“Archie just said he did his bit and you turned up. You’ll be received differently, of course — ” Lily looks her up and down — “but that may not be a bad thing.” She grins. “Unlike Victor Laszlo, you won’t make the men feel inadequate unless you want to.”

“Am I likely to want to?”

“No guarantees,” says Lily crisply. “I don’t choose my guests for their characters; not at these evenings, anyway. The idea is that most of the conversation will be informal. Soften ‘em up. Then, once you have them all eating out of your hand, you do your bit — say a few words — make a speech, that is,” she concludes, dragging herself out of American idiom. “We’d better fix up our story; I’m only an undercover incendiary. Could we have met in finishing school?”

“We could have,” agrees Ilsa. “Where did we go, and what were you like?”

“Geneva, and a terror. You’re quick.”

“I’ve had to be.”

“I bet.” Lily Rowan’s voice is soft on the words. “Look, forgive my being blunt about it, but what is Laszlo to you?”

Ilsa tells herself sternly that she should have expected the question, that she should not have the sense of a floorboard giving way. Swallowing, she temporizes: “That’s not an easy question.” 

“It shouldn’t matter,” says Lily, with sudden fierceness. “It shouldn’t. But some of them… they only like to think they’re cosmopolitan. And if you turn up inside a man’s secrets…” She shrugs abruptly.

Ilsa smiles, savoring her knowledge. “Part of the answer is that we are married.”

“Good God. Since when?”

“May 1939 — six weeks after we met, six weeks before he was thrown into a concentration camp.”

Lily Rowan does not say anything. She stands as if transfixed, reflected to Ilsa in one of her own mirrors, a doubled image, motionless.

“We decided,” says Ilsa coolly, “that it would be safer for us both for the connection to remain unknown. I have worked as his partner and lived — to all appearances — as his mistress.” She waits out the other woman’s silence.

“How much of that,” says Lily slowly, “do you want the people in there to know?”

Ilsa shakes her head slightly; her throat is suddenly tight. “I am here because we are allies, not because we are husband and wife. But if it would be useful… we’re not keeping it a secret.”

“Understood. Well,” adds Lily, with a flash of humor, “that would be overstating it. But I shouldn’t keep you from them any longer.”

She ushers Ilsa to a broad room with high ceilings and French doors that reflect the light. Among the guests circulates more food than Ilsa is used to seeing in one place. 

“I was once accustomed to such things.”

“You look it,” says her hostess approvingly. “Have a champagne cocktail and relax.” Ilsa concentrates on not gripping the stem of the glass too tightly as she is swept into the crowd.

When her audience has eaten and drunk well, she makes her speech into a silence prepared by the clinking of glasses.

“Thank you,” says Ilsa, careful to enunciate clearly, “for welcoming me. I am assured that the giving of speeches becomes easier with time.” She wishes Rick were in the crowd, to wink at her, to mock the gathering and her own solemn levity.

“I could give many reasons for my presence here. I could cite the dangers and delays suffered by the man whom you expected. Or I could speak of those who endangered their own lives to preserve mine; who have endangered their lives for others countless times. There is an Austrian professor of linguistics, now in exile as a headwaiter. A less likely member of a Resistance movement you could hardly imagine: he is rather avuncular, and very fat. And he is quite recklessly brave and generous. There is a Portuguese pharmacist who makes dangerously strong moonshine — is that the word?” A ripple of laughter assures her that it is. “There is an American, stubborn and loyal and contrary… but perhaps it is superfluous to say that if I tell you that he, too, is a New Yorker.” 

Ilsa clenches her hands, trying to keep them from shaking. “I know,” she says, “the fear that comes with being caught up in a fight you did not want. I know the temptation to avoid it, to cling to the small things that make up a life. But I can assure you that, in joining this fight, you will be in the very best of company.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have borrowed the characters of Archie Goodwin, Lily Rowan, and Nero Wolfe from Rex Stout, master of whodunit plotting and taut mid-century prose. I have treated them with care, and I hope to have done them something like justice. 
> 
> The website http://www.1940snewyork.com/ was invaluable in figuring out where Ilsa would have gone when in NYC. The SS Excalibur was one of several ships making the Lisbon-New York crossing in 1941: http://www.ssmaritime.com/Excalibur.htm.


	6. Epilogue, Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor Laszlo arrives in New York. This final chapter is both longer and more ambivalent than I had originally planned, but I yielded to the temptation of an Old Hollywood ending scene. All feedback appreciated.

Lying wakeful in a hostel off Delancey Parkway, he reflects that, on the whole, it has gone remarkably well. He is surrounded by the too-familiar sounds of shifting, snoring, breathing, of many men in a small space. He inhales deeply, reminding himself of where he is. He tries not to dwell on the mistake that might mark him, that might be recounted in bars, in brothels. 

In the boiler room, another man — a boy half his age, dizzied by the heat — had caught him on the shoulder with his shovel. It had been partly his own fault, of course. But the real mistake was relying on the wrong training for his response. He had not cried out or cursed. He had been motionless for a mere moment, and then resumed work. It was Frank who had grabbed his other arm, dragged him aside. 

“What the hell kind of prison were you in?”

He hadn’t answered; he can only hope his silence was mistaken for that of shock.

He falls asleep in the pre-dawn hush, soothed by the comparative silence of the city, the increasing noise of birds. Some hours later, he dons the cleaner of his two shirts and heads for Rivington St., to the public baths. Then, wearing both shirts (freshly washed) and several of the scarves, he sets off in search of a seller of secondhand clothing. He ducks out of the December wind into the first shop he comes to. 

“A coat, perhaps?” says a voice behind him, and the accent reminds him of home. The shop’s owner, a stocky, red-bearded man in the long black coat of an observant Jew, is regarding him with amusement.  
He returns the man’s grin. “Yes. And a suit, I think.”

“Aha.” The man comes around the counter, sizes him up with a glance, and hands him a wooden hanger with a hotel’s name and a gray suit on it. He then returns to the piles of shirts labeled with unfamiliar numbers, sorting through them with plump and dexterous hands.

“You’re very kind,” says Victor Laszlo.

The man’s eyes twinkle. “An expert, at least. Two shirts?”

“Ah, no. But thank you.”

The man shrugs in easy acceptance, but it seems to Laszlo that he misses nothing. The price he is told to pay for suit, shirt, and overcoat is suspiciously low. Laszlo takes up a pair of shoes and asks their price as if as an afterthought, a form of silent bargaining, of silent thanks.

He takes the subway as far as Penn Station, and walks west to the address he has memorized. He sits down at the counter of Sam’s Place, trying to assess what is likely to happen next.

“What’ll you have, bud?”

He blinks at this form of address, but does not perceptibly pause. “Coffee, please.”

“Just coffee?”

“Just coffee. Black.” The aromas of fried potatoes and frying meats fill the air, but he’ll need to pay for a bed tonight. The coffee is silky on the tongue, and blessedly hot. He nurses it carefully, examining his fellow patrons. There is no one consuming a glass of milk. If all has gone well, after all, the rendezvous has already been kept.

At Times Square, he pays another subway fare, and resolves it must be his last of the day. The Norwegian embassy turns out, to his surprise, to be housed in a skyscraper like those surrounding it, proudly and blindingly modern. He explains his errand, gives her name.

“No,” says the silver-haired woman behind the desk regretfully. “Plenty of Lunds, but no Ilsa.”

“She might be using Laszlo.”

“Not a Norwegian name,” says the woman, almost to herself, as her finger traces back up her list.

“No; it is mine.” Her finger checks, then continues. She does not proffer sympathy or express alarm, and his high opinion of her increases.

“Nothing, I’m afraid. You’ve tried your embassy?”

“I am a Czechoslovakian.” 

“Oh.” 

“Thank you for your help.” He turns away; he does not want the woman to see his face.

“Wait!” He gives himself a moment of stillness before facing her again. “You might try the Bohemian National Hall,” she says; “I’ll write down the address.”

“Thank you,” says Victor Laszlo again.

When he emerges from the embassy, snow is swirling capriciously around the corners of the angular buildings, softening them. He sings under his breath as he walks up Fifth Avenue, arms swinging. “Aj Lučka, Lučka Široká…” Far are his green fields. 

It is dark by the time he reaches the address, but the building’s facade is radiant. Entering, he shivers convulsively in the sudden warmth. In the hall there is a Christmas tree ablaze, and — yes — there are gingerbread cookies on a table. He runs a hand through his hair, shaking away melting snow.

“Vítej!” 

“If you please,” says Victor Laszlo, and it is a relief to speak his own tongue, “I am looking for someone.”

“Ah,” says the florid, mustachioed man who has taken his arm. “Anna!” 

He finds himself pushed forward through a bewildering throng of old friends greeting each other, young people flirting, children chasing each other. 

Anna turns out to be a dark-haired young woman with a broad, good-humored face. Again he explains himself. “Ilsa Lund,” he concludes. “Laszlo. Either, or both…”

“Oh!” exclaims Anna. Her face is irradiated with delight. “You’re here! Pán Kováč will be so glad. Pán Kováč!” 

Pán Kováč turns out to be a middle-aged man with a widow’s peak; he is slightly flushed with heat, or wine, or both.

“Victor Laszlo,” says Laszlo, and extends his hand.

“Ah!” His hand is wrung with genuine fervor. “This calls for a toast. You’ll stay?”

“I… thank you.” He closes his eyes briefly. He feels a little as though he has wandered into a fairy tale, into an enchanted bounty. “I would, truly, be honored. But I…”

“You must rejoin your wife.” Pán Kováč finishes his sentence for him, as if in apology for his own too-eager heartiness. “Of course, of course.”

Almost in the same breath as this conclusion, Anna bobs back into the conversation, bearing an address and a tray of glasses. “Mulled wine!” she says cheerfully. “And her address.”

“Thank you. Good health!”

“Good health!”

Victor Laszlo returns the empty glass to the tray, and takes up the slip of paper. Thanks are insufficient. “I will return, of course. And I am grateful.”

“Don’t speak of it,” says Pán Kováč.

“Good luck!” says Anna.

At first, he waits in the doorway, smoking, trying to look like a man taking a moment’s shelter from the weather. No passerby heeds him. Emboldened, he puts a hand to the outer door, as if absently, habitually; it swings open, and he finds himself in the vestibule. The electric bulb overhead is failing, and his cheap shoes squelch faintly against the tile floor, adding to the chill damp. He examines the mailboxes, but there are no names, only numbers. He paces, slowly, trying to keep heaviness from settling into his limbs.

Somewhere in the building, a door is opened, releasing the smell of boiled cabbage; he is not sure whether the pang he feels is of hunger or nausea. Into the stairwell comes the tap of French heels, the jingle of keys. They belong to a young woman in a dress with a lace collar, a still-unbuttoned coat, glasses with silver frames.

“Good evening.”

“Oh!” 

“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean…”

“If you’re selling anything, I’m not buying.” Her voice is high and hard with mistrust.

“I’m not. I am looking for my wife.”

“Well, perhaps she doesn’t want to be found.” She is buttoning her coat with savage rapidity.

“Please.” She pauses with her hand on the door. “It is not like that.” He relaxes his attempt at English pronunciation; here, being a stranger may be no disadvantage. “Ilsa Lund; she left this address. I have only recently arrived, and she — and I — ”

She interrupts him. “How long have you been married?”

“Two and a half years,” he responds promptly.

“Hardly newlyweds, then. And she doesn’t wear a ring.”

“No.” _Thank God, thank God, she is still here._ “Please,” he says again, and extends his hand, palm upwards, “please, I know it is not sensible. I should wait here, and greet her when she returns. But my mind rebels at waiting, and my skin crawls with it. And I think — ” he notices his hand is visibly trembling, and lowers it — “I think she will want to know that I am… safe.” He rejects _alive_ as inviting too many questions, as introducing an unwelcome touch of melodrama.

“Tell me what she looks like.” This is a victory; he does not let his knowledge of that show in his face.

“She is tall,” he begins, “her hair light brown, with a — a brightness not often seen in that color.” _She is round-limbed, and entirely fair…_ “She never makes an idle gesture,” he tells the young woman. “Always it means something. She likes good coffee.” He shakes himself slightly. “Sorry, that’s not…”

“Wait here,” she says. “I’ll get you the address.” She is gone, unbuttoning her coat as she runs, before he can thank her. He awaits her with his hand on the newel post.

“I’ll be late,” she tells him, as she hands him the slip of paper. 

“Thank you. Please, convey my apologies to your companion — and accept my thanks.”

She smiles, a small, rueful smile. “I hope I’ve done the right thing.”

He holds the door for her, and follows her out into the night. As he walks westward, he reflects on that curiously solemn farewell. It may be folly, of course, this sense of urgency that burns within him, hollowing him out. Knowing when he can afford to follow such irrational impulses, and when it is imperative to do so, has saved his life more than once. But he has made miscalculations; this may, of course, be one of them. He steps off the curb into a puddle. But then, after all, how little there is to lose, now! Some version of dignity, doubtless. But he cannot help feeling that he would put himself in a false position if he materialized apparently unwearied, unscathed. For those in daily danger, he must seem to be exempt from it; here, those far from conflict must be made to feel its weight.

With rapid steps he traverses the park. He passes a sullen lake, a frozen fountain. Mysterious statues loom in the darkness: a boy in the garb of a lost century stands eternally balanced on one foot, the falcon on his wrist spreading its wings, eager for prey. Victor’s desire to run is no whit lessened by the knowledge that there is no need.

He enters the building at a brisk stride, and enters the lift as though he does not fear it. At the apartment door, he rings the bell without giving himself time to consider an alternative. 

The door is opened swiftly — halfway. “You’re late,” hisses a maid through the opening. “If you’ve even got the right apartment.”

“Lily Rowan,” he says, and hopes it is shibboleth enough. 

She opens the door, closes it behind him, takes his hat and coat, and abandons him in a dim entryway, all wordlessly. Within a few moments, his hostess appears, a resplendent creature in sapphire silk, sapphire earrings.

“Well?” Her voice is cool, self-possessed, audibly irritated.

“Miss Rowan. I apologize for taking you from your guests. Victor Laszlo.”

Her eyes widen. “What?”

“Laszlo. Victor Laszlo. I didn’t want to explain myself to the concierge, or your maid, or — I wanted to give you warning.”

“Consider me warned.” There is a brief, unmistakably appraising pause. “Do you often make such dramatic entrances, Mr. Laszlo?”

“On the contrary, I strive to be punctual and inconspicuous.”

Her mouth twitches. “Yet here you are.”

“Here I am,” he agrees.

“Well.” She takes a deep breath. In the silence, from the next room, Ilsa’s voice rises briefly above the gathering’s noise. He shivers.

“You’re not going to faint on me, are you?”

“Oh no,” he assures his hostess. “I faint even more seldom than I make dramatic entrances.”

“Delighted to hear it. You must forgive me,” she continues; “I expected you preceded by signs and messengers, and then, I confess, I wasn’t sure you could be expected at all.” She seems to conclude some calculation, gives her head the slightest possible shake. “How did you get here?”

“I walked,” he says, and then realizes that is not what she means. “I worked my passage as a stoker.” She raises her eyebrows. “I used a dead man’s papers.”

“I trust you didn’t kill him.” He lets the jesting remark hang in the silence; he has no desire to explain or justify what happened between him and the Hungarian in the Lisbon alleyway. He counts himself fortunate that the man only carried a knife — and wanted him alive.

“Jesus,” says Lily Rowan. Still he is silent. “I expect,” she says slowly, “that you’ve come for Ilsa.”

“Yes,” says Victor Laszlo.

She smiles — a little sadly, he thinks. “I’ll send her to you. People will wonder about my absence and hers, so I’m afraid you’ll have to make a speech. But you’re good at that, and it needn’t be long.” He wonders if he has blanched. “You can get away afterwards. I’ll book a dinner for the two of you, and — do you have a place to stay?” Wordlessly he shakes his head. “That too, then.” She frowns slightly, and seems on the verge of making some other question, some other observation. But all she says is: “I’ll tell her.”

He can only nod. Lily Rowan turns back to her guests. Moving to keep her in view, he catches sight of himself in a mirror with a modern frame. He is dismayed to see the reflection of a gray man, the same shade shared by wary eyes and ill-fitting suit, and beneath the white-streaked hair, a countenance pale as wax. He resists the urge to scrub a hand over his face, as if he could remove or remake something he sees. 

Lily Rowan’s golden coif is a landmark in the throng; he watches her progress. And then she stops, and he holds his breath. Ilsa is dressed in black crepe, its severe lines drawn to a draped bow at her hip. There is about her the quietness and the vibrancy he first loved. Her wrists and collarbones show white in the lamplight; he wonders if he imagines that her movements are smaller, more restrained than usual. He looks about him, as if some aid might materialize, some plan suggest itself. His head aches, and he is as thirsty as if he had lost blood. 

Lily Rowan puts a hand on Ilsa’s arm, and tells her. He watches the color come up in her face; he watches her nostrils flare. She turns from her hostess almost abruptly. He knows himself to be as yet invisible in the dim vestibule; he finds himself wishing to prolong this moment of her pure exultation. Her face is aflame with triumph, and she walks with the unhurried satisfaction of a conqueror. As she approaches, he fills his lungs, echoing her breath. She enters with unhesitating step, and stands before him.

“Victor Laszlo,” says his wife. “Victor Laszlo.” She does not move to touch him, nor he her. 

He swallows. “Could you ever have forgiven me, had I not managed it?”

He has the pleasure of watching her lips curl indulgently. “Never.”

He smiles. “You are magnificent.”

To his relief, she laughs. “Thank you. Why?”

He steps toward her. “A diplomat in four languages. I find you in a foreign country, having gained the loyalty of fellow-lodgers and the affection of near-strangers, negotiating national opinion over canapés.”

“And very good canapés they are too. Have you eaten?”

“This morning.” He reaches for hand, carries it to his lips. “Miss Rowan tells me she will arrange for us to dine. I am to give a speech first.”

“Singing for your supper,” she says softly. “And what will you do then, Victor Laszlo?”

“Besides having dinner with my wife?”

“Yes.” She closes the distance between them, standing so close that he can feel her warmth. “We have a future now.” His heart turns over. “What do you plan to do with it?”

“I…” A shiver runs through him. He ought to be able to think of something. He ought to be able to offer her something. “I do not know how to plan for a long life, Ilsa.”

Something like grief twists in her face. Something shuts, that before was open. He tries to gather himself to apologize, to make amends; before he can speak, she acts. She places her free hand flat over his heart, then slowly slides it up around the nape of his neck.

“Well,” says Ilsa, “then you’ll have to learn.” And she leans up, and kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on descriptions: I know they are often unusually precise, but this is predicated on the belief that Victor would be trained to observe and recall small details, as a matter of survival. I've tried to convey some of his awkward humor, as well.
> 
> A contemporary boiler room, albeit not from precisely the right kind of ship: http://www.shipscribe.com/usnaux/ww1/images/i04000/i04822.jpg.
> 
> On public baths, see here: https://michaelminn.net/newyork/buildings/public_baths/
> 
> The invaluable website http://www.1940snewyork.com/ describes the Lower East Side as having “color and atmosphere seldom encountered in the American scene.”
> 
> On subway services in 1940s NYC: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9E01E5DF1F3EE33ABC4D52DFB467838B659EDE, and  http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/maps/system_1939.jpg.
> 
> The marching song Victor sings to keep himself warm:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylBDQYAzO80.
> 
> The statue Victor sees is this: http://assets.centralparknyc.org/images/things-to-see-and-do/falconer-l.jpg I know the boy isn't solely balanced on one foot, but it rather looks as though he is from the drive... or at least I think so.


End file.
